The growing popularity and increasing accessibility of the Internet has resulted in its becoming a major source of information, as well as a vehicle for inter-party transactions, in a variety of environments. For instance, a number of different types of entities, such as government agencies, school systems and organized groups, host Internet and/or intranet web sites that provide informational content about themselves and topics related to their interests. Similarly, commercial enterprises employ web sites to disseminate information about their products or services, as well as conduct commercial transactions, such as the buying and selling of goods. To support these activities, each web site requires an infrastructure at one or more centralized locations that are connected to a communications network, such as the Internet. Basically, this infrastructure stores the informational content that is associated with a particular site, and responds to requests from end users at remote locations by transmitting specific portions of this content to the end users. The infrastructure may be responsible for conducting other types of transactions appropriate to the site as well, such as processing orders for merchandise that are submitted by the end users. A significant component of this infrastructure is a web server, namely a computer having software which enables it to receive user requests for information, retrieve that information from the appropriate sources, and provide it to the requester. Web sites which provide more complex services, such as online ordering, may also include application servers to support these additional functions.
In the case of relatively small entity, the infrastructure to support its web site may be as simple as a single server, or even a portion of a server. Conversely, a large, popular web site that contains a multitude of content and/or that is accessed quite frequently may require numerous web servers to provide the necessary support. Similarly, web sites for commercial entities, via which transactional operations are conducted, may employ multiple application servers to support transactions with a large number of customers at one time. In addition to servers, the infrastructure for a web site typically includes other types of computing devices such as routers, firewalls, load balancers and switches, to provide connectivity, security and efficient operation.
The present invention is particularly directed to the manner in which servers, and other devices necessary to support a web site, are provisioned with the appropriate software necessary for the site. Provisioning includes the installation of the software that is executed by the device to perform the functions assigned to it, and the subsequent configuration of that software to optimize its operation for the given site. Such provisioning initially occurs when the web site is launched, i.e. when one or more servers are connected to an appropriate communications network such as the Internet, and loaded with the programs and data content necessary to provide the services associated with the site. Thereafter, a need for further provisioning may arise, particularly in the case of a successful web site, when additional servers must be added to support an increasing number of requests from end users. In another instance, the provisioning of the servers and other computing devices may be required as part of a disaster recovery operation, for example a sudden interruption in power, an attack by a hacker, or corruption of stored software and/or data.
The provisioning of a server or other device that supports the operation of a web site involves several discrete steps. First, the appropriate operating system software must be loaded onto the device. Thereafter, software applications that are required to support the particular functions or services associated with the site are loaded, such as database software, credit card processing software, order processing software, etc. After they have been loaded, these applications may need to be configured, e.g. their operating parameters are set to specific values, to support the requirements of the particular site and/or optimize their performance for that site. Finally, the content associated with the individual pages of the web site must be loaded, after which further configuration may be required. The order in which these various components are loaded onto the server and configured can be quite critical, to ensure compatibility of the various programs with one another.
In the past, the provisioning of web servers was often carried out manually. In other words, each item of software was individually loaded onto the server and then configured by a person having responsibility for that task. One problem with such an approach is the fact that it consumes a significant amount of time. For a relatively large site that is supported by multiple servers, the provisioning could take several days to be completed, thereby delaying the time before the site can be launched and/or upwardly scaled to accommodate increasing traffic. Another, and perhaps more significant, limitation associated with the manual provisioning of devices is the lack of repeatability in the software configurations. More particularly, whenever manual operations are involved in the installation of software, there is always the possibility of human error, such as the failure to install one of the required components, or the loading of the various items of software in the wrong order. Such errors can result in misoperation or total failure of the web site, and can be extremely time consuming to discover and correct.
In addition, when a configuration adjustment is made on one device to improve its performance, if that change is not recorded by the person making the adjustment, it may not be carried over to subsequent devices of the same type when they are provisioned. This latter problem is particularly acute if a device should experience a failure a considerable period of time after the given device was configured. If the person who was responsible for originally configuring the device is no longer available, e.g. he or she has left the employ of the company hosting the site, it may not be possible to reconstruct the original configuration if it was not recorded at the time it was implemented. The same concerns arise if the site needs to be upwardly scaled by adding more devices of the same type after the employee has left.
To overcome some of the problems associated with the installation of software on multiple computers, various techniques have been developed which permit software to be automatically deployed to the computers with minimum involvement by humans. However, these techniques are limited in the types of environments in which they can be utilized. For example, in an enterprise where all of the users interact with the same legacy applications, a “cookie cutter” type of approach can be used to deploy the software. In this approach, every computer can have the same, standard set of programs, each with the same configuration. Once the software programs and settings have been determined, they can be packaged in a fixed format, sometimes referred to as a “ghost” or “brick”, and automatically disseminated to all of the appropriate computers. Thus, whenever a change is made to the standard configuration, it can be easily distributed to all of the users at once. Similarly, if a particular user experiences a failure, for instance due to a computer virus, the standard package can be readily installed on the user's computer, to restore the original functionality.
However, this type of automated deployment is not effective for situations in which computers, such as servers, need to be customized to accommodate the individual requirements of varied users. One example of such a situation is a data center which may house the infrastructure for hundreds of different web sites. The hardware and software requirements for these sites will typically vary among each site. For instance, each site will likely have a different business logic associated with it, i.e. the informational content and services associated with a given site will not be the same as those of any other site supported by that data center. These differences may require a combination of hardware and software which is unlike that of any other site. Similarly, different web site developers may employ different platforms for the sites, thereby necessitating various combinations of operating systems and application programs on the servers of the respective sites. Furthermore, different types of equipment may be utilized for the sites, thereby adding to the complexity of the provisioning process. In some cases, the same site may require a variety of different hardware devices, operating systems and application programs to handle all of the different services provided by that site. For an entity that is responsible for managing the varied infrastructure of these sites, such as a data center operator or a third-party infrastructure utility provider, the known approaches to automated software deployment are not adapted to meet the high degree of customization that prevails in these types of situations. Rather, because of the flexibility that is required to accommodate a different configuration of hardware and/or software for each site, manual provisioning is still being practiced to a large extent, with all of its attendant disadvantages.
It is desirable, therefore, to provide a framework for the automated provisioning of servers and other devices that support various types of network-based services, such as the hosting of an Internet or intranet web site. Such a framework should exhibit sufficient flexibility to accommodate the differing needs of the hosts of such services, while maintaining repeatability, and hence reliability, in the provisioning process.